The Last Temptation (27 page)

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like saying he didn’t want to spend time with his son. But he’s never forgiven me for it.’

At the time, Tony had thought it was remarkably bad psychology for someone who made her living out of the labyrinth of the human mind. Unless, of course, she had wanted the marriage to fail. Which had followed with depressing inevitability, as he’d gathered from her Christmas cards and occasional e-mails. What she hadn’t expected was for Kurt to hang on to Hartmut, and he could tell, reading between the lines, that the loss of her son had devastated Margarethe.

And now, if this report was to be believed, Margarethe’s son had lost her in the most final of ways. Tony still couldn’t take it in. There was a terrible element of happenstance in such a death.

It was too late for Margarethe. But it might not be too late for others. Never mind that it suited him to escape the press baying for comments on Jacko Vance. Never mind that he was desperate with boredom in his job. And never mind that he wanted to be near Carol. Saving lives was paramount.

For better or worse, he’d made his choice.

In the half-hour before she could expect to find Marijke in the chat room, Petra browsed the web, dipping in and out of various serial killer sites to see if she could find any correspondences between recorded cases and the particular fetishes of their own killer. But her search proved fruitless. The depraved minds whose activities were recorded in lurid detail hadn’t indulged in death by this sort of drowning, nor could she find cases of pubic scalping, though she did discover that it had a name - gynelophism. Not much help there when it came to attempting to extract some motivation for their killer. As usual when she was surfing, Petra was surprised to see

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how quickly the time had gone. Already she was four minutes late for her rendezvous with Marijke. Hastily, she made her way to the discussion room, where she found Marijke tryhig to avoid being drawn into a debate on European human rights legislation with two gay men and a bisexual woman. She signalled her arrival and double-clicked on Marijke’s name to bring her into a private space.

P: sorry to keep you waiting, i got lost on the web.

M: No problem. I only just got here myself. So, what is Carol Jordan like?

P: very professional, very smart, she’s very quick to pick things up, and i think she has the nerve to carry off this undercover job.

M: Is she easy to get along with?

P: very easy, you can tell she’s been a proper street cop, not one of the management who sits behind a desk and forgets what life is like for the rest of us. i think we’re going to be a good team, she’s not afraid to listen to advice.

M: I have my fingers crossed for you. Did you get the chance to talk to her about the murders?

P: yes, Jordan had a good idea about that, she thinks you should persuade your boss to send the details of this murder to europol with a request for any information about similar cases, then europol will circulate all the other member forces, and i can come up with the heidelberg and bremen connections quite legitimately, what do you say?

M: You think it will work?

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P: i think it’s the only way to cover our backs, once

it’s out in the open, it’ll take them weeks to set up

a proper task force because nobody will want to give

up jurisdiction, and they’ll all be fighting over which

country is the lead investigator, meanwhile, we can

get on with our own investigation. Jordan is going to

ask her dr hill to do a profile for us, so we will have

a head start, we still have a chance to do ourselves I

a big favour here, but nobody can point the finger

at us for doing anything we shouldn’t have.

M: I suppose it makes sense. But it won’t be easy to persuade Maartens to look to Europol for help. He has very old-fashioned ideas about organization. He’s against anything that takes police work off the streets and into the office.

P: so you have to make it look like there’s something in it for him. maybe he’d like the glory of being the first person to spot that there might be a serial killer out there? because it’ll be his name on the report, not yours, right?

M: Good idea. He could make it look like a triumph for traditional police work, if I persuade him right. I’ll try in the morning.

P: let me know how it goes. M: Tomorrow night?

P: i’ll try. make it late, though, midnight, if everything goes right, Jordan will be working late, which means i might have to as well, sleep well, babe.

M: Slaap ze, liefje. Tot ziens.

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Tadeusz Radecki excused himself from the restaurant table when he saw that the number calling his mobile phone belonged to Darko Krasic. In the passage leading to the toilets, out of earshot of his respectable companions, he answered its insistent chirrup. ‘Yes?’

‘When will you be home, boss?’ Krasic asked. ‘I’ve got some news for you.’

‘Good or bad?’

‘It’s nothing that needs urgent action.’

‘Won’t it wait till tomorrow?’

‘I think you’ll want to know this.’ ťi Tadeusz looked at his watch. ‘Meet me there in an hour.’

‘OK. See you then.’ Krasic ended the call and Tadeusz walked back into the noisy restaurant. They were already at the coffee stage, so the party would be breaking up within the half-hour anyway. And since he had no intention of offering to escort home the single woman his four comfortably coupled friends had invited along for his benefit, there would be no problem in getting back home within the hour. Darko had sounded very enigmatic on the phone. But wondering about something he couldn’t guess at was a waste of energy, and Tadeusz had never been inclined to worry about anything before he had to. He joined in the conversation round the table as if his call had been of supreme unimportance, but precisely thirty minutes later, he pushed back his chair and announced that he had an early start in the morning. He dropped a sheaf of banknotes on the table to cover his share of the bill, kissed all three women on both cheeks, hugged his male friends and left.

The familiar black Mercedes was sitting outside his apartment building when he turned the corner into the street. As Tadeusz approached the front door, Krasic emerged from the car and fell into step beside him. ‘So, what’s

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this mysterious news?’ Tadeusz asked as they entered the ‘ lift.

‘It’ll keep for a few minutes longer,’ Krasic said.

Tadeusz laughed. ‘You are so cautious, Darko. I promise you, this lift isn’t bugged.’

‘It’s not that. You might want a drink when you hear what I have to tell you.’ 1

Tadeusz raised his eyebrows, but said nothing more until they were both inside his apartment. He poured two glasses of Armagnac and handed one to Krasic. ‘Now, tell me what it is that is so terrible I need a brandy before I can hear it.’

Krasic looked less than his usual imperturbable self. ‘It’s bloody strange, that’s what it is.’ He walked over to a set of shelves where three photographs of Katerina were displayed in silver frames. ‘I finally managed to get some information about the motorbike.’

Tadeusz experienced a convulsion in his stomach, a strange turbulence that seemed to rearrange his internal organs. Whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t this. ‘You have a name?’

‘No, nothing that straightforward. Our man went back and talked again to the teenage boy who recognized the bike as a BMW. The kid was really enthusiastic. He kept offering to have hypnosis, to see if he could come up with any more details.’

‘And?’

‘It took a little while to get the session organized, but eventually, he got some woman to come along and put the boy into a trance. And the kid came up with quite a bit more detail.’

‘Such as?’ Tadeusz was leaning forward now, eager as a hound with a scent in his nostrils.

‘Like, he noticed that you couldn’t read the number plate

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because it was all smudged with mud. He said there was something funny about the number plate. He couldn’t be any more clear than that, but he was very definite that there was something wrong.’ Krasic turned away from the images of Katerina and sat down on the sofa. ‘And he was able to describe the bike much better than he had before. Stuff like the shape of the exhausts, that sort of bollocks. Anyway, our man wrote it all down. Then he got on to BMW and asked what model of bike this matched up with. And this is where it gets very fucking strange.’

Tadeusz drummed his fingers on the wall. ‘Strange how?’

‘According to BMW, the description our man gave them didn’t fit any bike they’ve ever made for sale in Germany. So, our man thinks it’s all been a fucking total waste of time, getting this kid under the influence and picking his brain. Then the man from BMW calls him back.’

‘Christ, Darko, get on with it,’ Tadeusz growled.

‘All right, all right, I’m getting there. The BMW guy had gone and checked with then* special projects people and it turns out they did once make a bike that fits the description. It was a limited edition of three hundred and fifty high performance bikes. Export only. They sold it hi the UK and Scandinavia. And get this - almost all the bikes were sold to law enforcement. For traffic cops and special ops.’

Tadeusz looked bewildered. ‘What? That doesn’t make any sense.’

‘That’s what our man said. He asked them how come an export-only bike was involved in an accident in Berlin. They didn’t have a clue, but they gave him all the details of the bike. And when he ran it through vehicle registration, it turns out there isn’t a single fucking bike with this spec registered in Germany.’

‘So you’re saying that whoever killed Katerina, chances are

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they did it on a foreign police bike?’ Tadeusz took a deep swig of his brandy and paced the floor. ‘This is insane. It makes no sense at all.’

Darko shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’ve had longer to think about it than you have, and there is one explanation that sort of fits the facts. You know how these fucking motorbike cowboys get about their machines. It’s like they’re joined at the hip. You can imagine one of them deciding to take his undercover traffic bike on a little holiday. So, let’s say for the sake of argument that it’s a Brit. For a split second, he forgets he’s driving on the wrong side of the road, he causes a major accident and he goes into total fucking panic and just steps on the gas. I mean, he’s not even supposed to have the bike over here, and now he’s fucked somebody up big time. Of course he’s going to leg it fast as he can.’

‘And you think that makes sense?’ Tadeusz demanded belligerently.

Krasic shifted in his seat, spreading his overcoat wide and splaying his meaty thighs, maximizing his physical impact to cover his uncertainty. ‘I can’t think of any other explanation.’

‘Neither can I. And that’s what I don’t like.’ He slammed the flat of his hand against the wall. ‘It’s bullshit, however you look at it.’

‘Tadzio, it was an accident. They happen all the time. You’re just going to have to let it go.’

Tadeusz whirled round, his face a rictus of anger. ‘Fuck that. Whether it was an accident or not, somebody should pay.’

‘You’ll get no argument from me on that. And if there was any chance of finding out who was riding that bike, I’d be the first in there, making the bastard pay. But he’s out of our reach.’

Suddenly, all the fight went out of Tadeusz. He crumpled

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into a chair, head lolling back. A single tear gathered in the corner of one eye and slithered down his temple. Krasic got to his feet, awkward in the face of emotion. Tm sorry, Tadzio,’ he said gruffly.

Tadeusz rubbed the tear away with the heel of his hand. ‘You did your best, Darko,’ he said. ‘You’re right. It’s time to let go. Time to move forward.’ He managed a faint smile. Til see you tomorrow. It’s time I started thinking about the future.’

Though it pained Krasic to see his boss hurting, he walked out of the apartment with a spring in his step. It looked as though they could finally start concentrating on business again. He had one or two ideas of his own, and he guessed that the time would soon be ripe to broach them. If there was a niggle of concern at the back of his mind about the

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mysterious identity of the bike that had caused Katerina’s death, he wasn’t going to think about it now. Paranoia was for the weak, and Krasic knew he wasn’t one of them.

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21

Tony walked through the arrivals gate at Tegel Airport, scanning the meeters and greeters. Over to one side, he saw a tall, slim woman with spiky black hair holding a small placard that read, ‘Hill.’ He moved towards her, a tentative smile on his face. ‘Petra Becker?’ he asked.

She extended a hand and they shook. ‘Dr Hill. It’s a pleasure to meet you.’

‘Tony, please,’ he said. ‘Thanks for coming out here to fetch me.’

‘Not a problem. You saved me having to listen to one of my colleagues complaining that I gave him the impossible task of tracking down a missing six-yearold/ i

He raised his eyebrows in a question. ‘I didn’t think that was your kind of case.’

Petra chuckled. ‘It’s not normally. This particular six-year old is being held hostage by Carol’s friend Radecki against her mother’s good behaviour. And I want her mother’s cooperation, so I have to find the child. But you don’t need to think about that. You’ve got more important things to deal with. Anything I can do to help, just ask.’

She’d already done plenty, he thought, as he followed her to her car. After reading Carol’s e-mail, he’d booked himself on the first flight to Berlin, told his departmental secretary there had been a sudden death in the family and that he was

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taking compassionate leave as of now. He knew he couldn’t call Carol, but he had Petra Becker’s name and he knew she worked for Criminal Intelligence. A few phone calls had tracked her down, and she had reacted with delight to the news that he was coming to Germany. He hadn’t bothered to explain the reason for his sudden decision; he didn’t want her changing her mind about having him on board because he had too close a relationship to one of the victims.